27. WEN

Istop breathing, and the world stops turning as Godric rises from the wreckage.

The reality of his return, his presence, the fact that he is in my sights and within my reach again, flood agonizing joy in my being. Fill it to overflowing until I’m drowning in crippling relief.

I think I’m weeping and sobbing his name.

He’s back. He’s here. Whole. Unharmed.

In this moment, as he stands there, larger than existence with his body burnished, and his wings an expanse of dread and dominance, I see it, clearer than ever. What he is.

The personification of Heaven’s might, its sword, and its dark harbinger of annihilation.

After the first heart-bursting moments of shock and wonder, I begin to notice other things.

He’s disheveled. His hair is longer and tousled over his forehead when not even flight dares muss it. He’s stripped naked to his Praetor’s pants and boots, when he always keeps his lethal weapon of a body covered. But it’s covered all right. In widespread bruises and deep gouges.

This isn’t from crashing through the ceiling. He looks as if he’d already waged a war—a protracted and brutal one.

There’s more evidence of a prolonged struggle. He’s lost bulk, making him more shredded, and his face more hewn. He’s also darker, his skin a much deeper bronze, as if he’d been baking under a scorching sun.

But for some reason, the thing that alarms me most is his tattoo. It seems to be expanding, as if trying to take over his chest. The glowing rune at its center, that strange A with multiple lines across it—what I thought I saw emerge during our first training session—is blazing, as if trying to burn through him.

A gasp escapes my swollen throat as the rune flares brighter, sending a shockwave through him, and the others braiding down his left arm suddenly spew others, spreading all over his body.

What did that fucking monster do to him?

I already thought it must have taken an army to overpower him. And Azazel has one. He could have had his whole Cadre attacking Godric round the clock. To subdue him, until he performed the Ligare.

He almost succeeded. Seconds more and it would have been done. I would have been bound to him for life.

Godric has arrived in the nick of time.

But how? Did he feel my danger like he always seems to? Or did he hear me scream for him? And it gave him the edge he needed to end the fight, and come to my rescue?

Later. Any explanations, everything else, can come later. Or not at all. I don’t care about anything, don’t want to know anything but that he’s safe, that he’s here. That he’s come back to me. For me.

My aching gaze and heart bask in the knowledge, and yes, the blessing of having him back. I won’t ask anything, of him, of life, ever again. Except one thing. That he looks at me, and I see everything in his eyes without the need for words.

As if in answer to my plea, surrounded by his obsidian lightning storm, he rises in the air, and pans around the post-catastrophe zone he’s created.

But instead of landing on me, his gaze continues to rove. And his expression …

Something’s wrong. Very wrong.

He doesn’t look, doesn’t feel like himself. The panty-melting assurance and arrogance, the pants-wetting focus and menace are absent. He looks almost—confused. As if he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, or where he even is.

“Godric, I’m here?—”

My thready call is cut short by a yawning drone that sounds like a raid of fighter jets. The reality is even scarier. What looks like the full force of Azazel’s Cadre appears high in the sky through the demolished ceiling. A squadron of doom arrowing down at Godric. Godric who’s hovering up there, unaware of it all.

“Snap out of it! Godric!”

His unseeing gaze only continues to roam around aimlessly.

I have to do something to rouse him from his fugue.

Frantic, I spill off the platform. Staggering to the limits of his forcefield, I reach out a hand to test it—and meet nothing but air.

He dropped it! He must have somehow felt I didn’t need it anymore. Even when he doesn’t seem to realize I’m even here.

Swooping down to the ground, I grab the first rock that fills my palm. In the same move as I straighten, I hurl it at him with all my adrenaline-boosted strength.

It clips him in the forehead like a dagger.

A cry of horror clogs in my chest as blood spurts from the slash, pouring into his left eye.

Dammit! I meant to hit his shoulder or some other non-vital part!

His hand shoots up to investigate the sting, his lips pulling back in a snarl as he wipes his eye, and his roaming gaze stops. On me.

It’s like a blur coming into focus as he looks at me through the blood, and his eyes clear, sharpen.

It’s the aggravation seeping into them that makes my heart flutter. Only I can do this to him. There’s no doubt.

He’s back. My Godawful is back!

I point upward and yell, “The Cadre!”

His head whips up, and in the same second, he takes off—with an angel-fucking sonic boom!

His launch brings an avalanche of rocks hurtling down, but his forcefield is back over me. It’s amazing that he’s maintaining it while on his way to fight a horde—uh, a host of fallen.

Even in the gruesome circumstances, as he plows right into their mass, my lips twitch as I remember his correction.

Then nothing else remains in my mind as he launches into full-on Son of Death mode.

I shouldn’t be able to perceive him moving at that speed, but I do. It’s like watching a fast-forwarded video, but I still see every blow and block, every twist and kick and flip. Guess my time distortion faculty has some good uses, after all.

I thought he’d shown me Melek, the martial art developed and practiced by the Nephilim, while training me, and especially when he fought Lorcan so I can collect their Angel Essence. But that was like showing a child the first three letters in the alphabet, while this is a literary work.

Then he draws out his blazing sword out of nowhere, and does this wings-off-wings-on trick of his, and it becomes packed full of action, drama, and high stakes. I could watch him forever.

Not that I’m sitting within my protective bubble and doing nothing to help him. He’s brought the fight into the chamber. While vast, it’s cramped compared to the open sky, making their numbers, especially with their fixed-on wings, a disadvantage. Many are being squeezed out of the fight by their brothers, bringing them near my sanctuary.

Praying my power would work through his shield, I reach out and latch onto the nearest one’s Life Essence, and yank. Like his brother during the Amulet Ceremony, the angel crumples like a wet towel.

I repeat this maneuver over and over, and over. I bring down a dozen, then two, drawing on a strength I didn’t have before. Godric’s return has recharged me. His nearness could also be boosting my power, as I always suspected it does.

Godric disposes of dozens more. The rubble is piling up with a mountain of unconscious fallen. More keep coming, their numbers seemingly unending. I never imagined there were so many of them.

The worst part is that I’m weakening, and every yank is getting harder than the last. Gritting my teeth, I shove everything down, and scream as I pull on the next one. It makes me feel my own Life Essence tearing out of me.

No. I have to keep helping Godric. More and more fallen keep pouring from the sky. But he’s only knocking them out, which puts him at a larger disadvantage. They don’t have any such qualms. They’re trying everything in their power to kill him.

Feeling my every organ on the verge of disintegrating, I force my shaking hands up, reach out for the next one and?—

Agony stabs into my thigh. I can’t even scream, barely turn to find a fallen outside the shield, venom in his eyes, and his dagger lodged in my flesh.

He’s trying to ram through, but it seems only the lowest part has dissolved, giving him the opening to throw the dagger. Godric must be getting overwhelmed, won’t be able to keep it up and then?—

Large, powerful hands shove beneath my armpits, then drag me over the rubble. Gurgling in alarm, I find Astaroth looming above me, his eyes crimson and raging with Hellfire.

“What are you doing?” I wheeze. “Let me go!”

He doesn’t, his expression forbidding as he picks me up as if I’m a rag-doll, and zooms me away.

Terror lodges into my brain like an ax.

He’s taking me back to complete the Ligare!